Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

Would you have given this advice to Columbus, since both Spain and Portugal had serious problems that the money which financed him could have helped?

The Incas certainly would have preferred it if Spain and Portugal had worried about their own problems instead of conquering them. Conveniently, of course, they're no longer around for us to ask about the matter.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

The Incas certainly would have preferred it if Spain and Portugal had worried about their own problems instead of conquering them. Conveniently, of course, they're no longer around for us to ask about the matter

More importantly, The Spanish by not dealing with their internal problems and instead focusing on plundering the frontier hastened considerably their decline as a world power. Long term, they did precisely the wrong thing. Exterminating the Incas served no important purpose, which makes the Spanish behaviour all the more abominable.

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Portugal, of course, had nothing to do with the voyage of the Italian, "Columbus." And as for Ferdinand and his ditzy blonde religious fanatic wife, Isabella, they didn't spend one cent either, they simply seized the private property of a citizen of one of their newly conquered territories and handed it over to Columbus. As for the so-called Incas, they were conquered two generations later, in a private-enterprise expedition, which is what most of them were in the first place. Hand 20% of the proceeds over to the crown, and the King will authorize your expedition, retroactively if necessary; hand 20% over to the Church, and they'll publicly declare that you are on a mission from God.

You won't get that kind of private enterprise these days, of course.

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I'd surely like to know what internal problems of Spain it is that people keep alluding to here. The only serious internal problem Spain had to face in respect to "the New World" was that all of the gold and silver that poured into their coffers caused a mounting inflation which affected all of Europe and which no one understood. Otherwise, you people are dealing in some kind of fantasy. Ferdinand and Isabella completed the reconquista in 1492, and has seized so much property and assets as a result, that it would finance the crown literally for centuries to come. Someone please tell me what internal problems Spain had that everyone here is chattering about.

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The Martian Way or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Someone please tell me what internal problems Spain had that everyone here is chattering about.

Apparently, you have been out of the US for a while, and it shows. If Spain had no internal problems, then of course Ferdinand and Isabella should have given the Spanish people a tax cut instead of financing the Columbus expedition.

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@Setanta,

The Empire fell apart in spectacular fashion from 1600-1650, the wealth stolen did not buy anything useful and in fact was a corrupting influence. The home territory continued to weaken enough that Neapolitan was able to take it less than 200 years latter. Has any other Empire dissolved so quickly?

Spain as we know is currently a reclamation project for the EU. England lost its empire as well but it is at least respected on the world stage today, it is a force, unlike Spain. Spain never recovered from the miscalculation on the value of taking other peoples wealth.

My argument is that there was no there there, which is verified by the events. Spain at the time appeared to be a strong a fully functioning society, but it was rotten from the inside out, and collapsed. Had the Spanish leaders paid attention to building Spain rather than becoming bandits they would have been better off in the long run.

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@hawkeye10,

Thomas and Hawkeye10 I can not ID with humans who hate their own specie to the degree you two gentlemen seem to and you both also seem to be of the opinion that we should had stay in the caves.

I can see the only logic end point for either of you two gentlemen is suicide as otherwise you are enjoying the benefits of all those evil men who kill and force their civilization on others down the ages.

Hell if it was not for the evil Spanish taking over South American by force those peaceful local people could had gone on killing each other to this very day and cutting out the hearts of young virgins beside.

Yes we should had remain in the caves and I think you both should throw away your computers and cloths and set a fine example of returning to the caves where at least you both seem to belong.

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@Thomas,

Correctly so. Any place in the solar system outside of Earth continues to be uninhabitable. Unless, of course, if we bring our own little mini-Earths to those places, which is what we did with our rockets and the space station. But why set up mini-Earths throughout outer space when we have a perfectly fine Earth right here?
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One all eggs in one basket is not wise and two we can live almost anywhere we care enough to within the solar system.

Second if you are living in a northern climate you are depending on technology beginning with fire. There is only a very small area of this planet where we can live with zero technology.

Just because a technology such as fire handling is a 100,000 years old does not mean it is not technology!

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Brandon wrote:
God in Heaven! No one has seriously believed for a long time that anyplace else in this solar system is inhabitable by humans.

Correctly so. Any place in the solar system outside of Earth continues to be uninhabitable. Unless, of course, if we bring our own little mini-Earths to those places, which is what we did with our rockets and the space station. But why set up mini-Earths throughout outer space when we have a perfectly fine Earth right here?

Brandon9000 wrote:
What about the trillions of other solar systems???

Unreachable given our current life expectancy and the known laws of physics. The astronauts would either die of old age before they get there, or they would be quashed by the acceleration necessary to get them there sooner. Of course, some day we might figure out how to extend our life expectancies into the millenia. Also, the laws of physics as we know them could someday prove incomplete or even wrong. If and when that happens, we can talk. Until then, however, I'm in the robots-in-space camp but not in the humans-in-space camp.

Brandon9000 wrote:
What about the possibility of other civilizations out there among those trillions of worlds?

They're an exciting possibility. If NASA wishes to build a radioastronomic equivalent of Hubble to contact them with less EM interference, I'm all for it. Maybe they can even build it with an integrated chat server where we can meet the aliens online. On the other hand, trying to meet up with them in person would be a waste of time in my opinion. As I said, wherever they are, they're too far away for that.

One point is to develop technology which will someday lead to interstellar travel. You can't do very difficult things if you never build up the skill set at all. We should learn more about putting people into space in hostile environments for years at a time, and how to extract the necessities of life in other places. This is among the skills we will need someday, when we can achieve the speeds necessary to reach the local group of stars.

Another point is mining and zero G manufacturing.

Another point, and one that you seem completely oblivious to, is the adventure, new experiences, and things that we can only learn by having people there, all things that are well worth spending money on. You ask why we should go when it's difficult, since we have a comfortable situation here. The philosophy expressed by that question is the exact opposite of a spirit of adventure.

Another point is that we develop science and technology faster when we have a difficult project requiring a lot of capability, than we do when it's all theoretical.

The final point is that if the Earth is every significantly damaged by an asteroid, it will be good to be able to preserve humans and technology in a few other places.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
Would you have given this advice to Columbus, since both Spain and Portugal had serious problems that the money which financed him could have helped?

The Incas certainly would have preferred it if Spain and Portugal had worried about their own problems instead of conquering them. Conveniently, of course, they're no longer around for us to ask about the matter.

It may have been good for the Incas if Europeans we had stayed away from the Americas, but it would have been very limiting for European civilization were we still limited to that part of the world.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
The Incas certainly would have preferred it if Spain and Portugal had worried about their own problems instead of conquering them. Conveniently, of course, they're no longer around for us to ask about the matter

More importantly, The Spanish by not dealing with their internal problems and instead focusing on plundering the frontier hastened considerably their decline as a world power. Long term, they did precisely the wrong thing. Exterminating the Incas served no important purpose, which makes the Spanish behaviour all the more abominable.

It doesn't seem to me that Europeans and their descendants are worse off for having found the new world.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I'd surely like to know what internal problems of Spain it is that people keep alluding to here. The only serious internal problem Spain had to face in respect to "the New World" was that all of the gold and silver that poured into their coffers caused a mounting inflation which affected all of Europe and which no one understood. Otherwise, you people are dealing in some kind of fantasy. Ferdinand and Isabella completed the reconquista in 1492, and has seized so much property and assets as a result, that it would finance the crown literally for centuries to come. Someone please tell me what internal problems Spain had that everyone here is chattering about.

Poverty, crime, and disease. The money spent to finance Columbus's expedition could, in principle, have been spent to make Spain a better place to live. People often say that we shouldn't develop space travel because we need the money for Earthly problems. My point is that every country in every age has problems that could benefit from the application of money, but that that's no justification for never doing adventurous things that don't have a clear path to a quick payoff.

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@Brandon9000,

Quote:

but that that's no justification for never doing adventurous things that don't have a clear path to a quick payoff.

the ability to wait for an open amount of time for a payoff that is not definable and may never happen is a luxury of the civilized world. Even in the best of times the budget for this type of endeavour has limits, and these are not the best of times. In my opinion the only project that is worth huge investment with unknown pay-off given our vast known investment needs is working on a new energy source that is sustainable and non-toxic. If you have a space program to work on that then I am all ears.

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@hawkeye10,

Lord we had alway invest in our future even in bad times and this is not all that bad times compare to 99.9999 percent of the times the human race had live in!!!

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Thomas and Hawkeye10 I can not ID with humans who hate their own specie to the degree you two gentlemen seem to and you both also seem to be of the opinion that we should had stay in the caves.

Do you seriously think that I hate humans as a species? Just because I think unmanned missions will explore the universe more efficiently than manned ones? If so, there's no point reasoning with you about the matter. Have a nice day!

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@BillRM,

we are losing the battle against microbes, we have polluted the food and water supply, we are quickly making both the Oceans and the crop land toxic, we are beginning to see mass die-offs of land species, the ocean fisheries are on the verge of complete collapse, poverty and hunger of humans is growing quickly , huge numbers of humans have become migratory in the search for sustainment (money and/or food), the rule of law is practically in collapse as the order of nation states comes under enormous pressure, we are almost certainly with-in a few years of the next hostile nuclear detonations, climate change is beginning to ravish the earth and we already know that the global political system is not strong enough to deal with the resulting human misery.....

And the trends lines are almost all scary bad. These are not the best .0001% of human times.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Yes hawkeye10 that is why we are living longer and longer and longer every generation because we are losing the battles against microbes and had polluted the food and water supply!

Sorry this is complete nonsense since when was the last time we loss 1/3 of the known human race to a microbes for example. Or do you think that our water is more toxic then the water supply of any other culture in human history!!!!

Compare to any others ages we have the safer food and water and are way ahead in dealing with our little enemies also.

Do you know any history at all? Try reading just a few books on the water supply systems even in the high ancient civilizations or the history of the human race dealing with large scale diseases outbreaks that ended up destroying whole cultures.

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@Thomas,

Do you seriously think that I hate humans as a species? Just because I think unmanned missions will explore the universe more efficiently than manned ones? If so, there's no point reasoning with you about the matter. Have a nice day!
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You had stated you do not wish us to take one more step into new environments and your logic is that we could not live in such environments without taking part of earth along with us so what the point!

Try living in say Detroit in the winter without using technology to take a part of the tropics along with you and see how long you survive. The time would be measure in minutes my friend.

Technology had always been with us. The reason why we had been able to live in over 99 percents of earth land areas is because of the technology beginning with using animals furs and fire.

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@BillRM,

Quote:

Sorry this is complete nonsense since when was the last time we loss 1/3 of the known human race to a microbes for example.

the experts disagree with you....almost all of the drugs are well on their way to becoming useless, as the microbes have gained immunity. We have made the situation much worse by over using the drugs and not using them properly. The race is on to come up with new drugs in time, but there is zero reason for optimism. I think I remember reading that we got less than 1/4 of the lifespan that was expected out of the current drugs...because we are not organized and motivated enough to use them correctly. The scientists currently have nothing that looks promising. The future is a known if we don't have the drugs, given how packed like sardines humans now live.

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Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

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